Warrior builds
In the endgame instances, the primary job of a Warrior is to tank. Holding aggro while migitating incoming damage is the only role for which this class is better suited than any other. Unfortunately, when soloing or in the early game instances, this skill is much less useful. Instead, DPS is a greater concern. The interesting challenge for each warrior is to find his personal compromise between these two goals. Notable Talents Talents are listed in the Warrior Talents section. The following covers talents that are more or less useful than they seem at first glance, as well as talents that are key to creating effective builds in each tree. Going over this list is recommended before attempting to create your own build. Tactical Mastery Tactical Mastery was once the most prominent talent among all of a warrior's choices. Now you can train Stance Mastery, at level 20, to retain 10 rage during stance changes. Now Tactical Mastery allows you to retain an additional 5, 10, or 15 Rage when changing stances. Combined with its move to the Protection tree Tactical Mastery is hardly a required Talent anymore. With the /castsequence macro command, you can create one button that switches stance, uses a skill, and switches back, just by tapping it three times. Some tactics that you may want to consider: *Charge -> Defensive/Berserker Stance *Battle Stance -> Overpower, Mocking Blow, Thunder Clap *Defensive Stance -> Shield Bash, Shield Block *Berserker Stance -> Intercept, Pummel, Whirlwind Arms Improved Heroic Strike (Tier 1) - This talent is useful for warriors who are just starting out and only have this skill to deal damage. It is also useful to Fury warriors, who often use it to consume their extra rage, and Protection warriors, who welcome anything that makes it easier to hold aggro. Ironically, this is least useful to an Arms warrior who is DPSing. Deflection (Tier 1) - Excellent skill available to all warriors who intend to tank at all. Additional parry makes Revenge available more often, which is a very good thing. Improved Rend (Tier 1) - This skill increases the damage of the rend ability. This is useless, however, as rend already scales incredibly badly with level. Useful at lower levels, but at higher ones, the only thing you'll be using rend for is to get the Blood Frenzy bonus, so you can safely skip this skill and invest talent points in something more useful. Iron Will (Tier 2) - Increases the chance to resist stun and charm effects. Most useful in PvP not as much in PvE. Improved Thunder Clap (Tier 2) - A great tanking talent in 5mans. Thunder Clap generates hate equal to 2.5x its damage, on 4 targets. Doubling this and making it cheaper is a great thing if you're trying to hold onto 2 or 3 mobs. Charge in, thunder clap, and switch to defensive stance. With 2.0.10 Thunder is now available in Defensive Stance as well. So now you can Charge, switch to defensive stance, and then Thunder Clap. Also having Thunder Clap while in Defensive Stance helps to keep aggro. Improved Overpower (Tier 3) - This talent changes Overpower from a decent skill to an amazingly powerful attack. With a two-hander, this skill will have a very high chance to deal massive damage, while dual-wielders will get good damage plus an easy way to activate Flurry. Anger Management (Tier 3) - Generates rage while you are in combat, and reduces decay while out of combat. This extra rage, while small, can add up over the course of a long fight or give you that last point you need to use a skill. Deep Wounds (Tier 3) - Again, a prerequisite talent in order to get Impale. It is actually a fairly useful ability, as a DoT of say 200 damage, while not impressive, is nothing to sneeze at. Impale (Tier 4) - Increases critical strike damage of your special abilities by 10%. Great for overpower with its very high crit rate, and good with 2h weapons if you're after lucky burst damage in PvP. Sweeping Strikes (Tier 5) - The 21-point Arms talent allows you to deal with two enemies at once. It can allow for incredible amounts of damage if you have enough rage to use Whirlwind, Mortal Strike, and Cleave while it's active. Mortal Strike (Tier 7) - This skill is unquestionably the single most powerful attack a warrior can bring into group PvP, as it combines excellent burst damage with an anti-healing debuff. Being based off weapon damage, Mortal Strike shines when used with an extremely slow and powerful two-handed weapon. Blood Frenzy (Tier 7) - Your Rend and Deep Wounds abilities also increase all melee damage caused to that target by 2-4%. Popular in raids since with many melee attacks hitting a raid boss, the extra damage will stack up quickly. Second Wind (Tier 7) - Whenever you are struck by a Stun or Immobilize effect you will generate 10-20 rage and 5-10% of your total health over 10 sec. This talent shines in PvP. Other classes try to control you with roots and stuns, this will help you survive and deal damage in return. Improved Mortal Strike (Tier 8) - Allows you to MS a bit more often and for more damage. Worth taking if you're this far in the tree and use Mortal Strike a lot, but there may be other options. Endless Rage (Tier 9) - 25% more rage from damage dealt. After patch 2.0's rage normalization, 2h weapons in particular generate much less rage than they used to. This talent fixes that problem and then some. Fury Cruelty (Tier 1) - Easy to grab and great for any dps build, or extra aggro when tanking. Essential for fury builds since crits activate Flurry. Unbridled Wrath (Tier 2) - Extra rage mainly useful for dual-wielding fast weapons. If you're going deeper in the fury tree, there's nothing better to spend points on. Piercing Howl (Tier 3) - A dazing shout with longer range than Hamstring. Very useful in PvP. Also good for escaping or safely distracting multiple melee opponents in either PVE or PVP. Dual Wield Specialization (Tier 4) - Increases offhand damage to 125% of 50%, making your offhand deal 62.5% of normal weapon damage. Tooltip is slightly deceptive, but with Flurry this is a great talent for PvE dps builds. Enrage (Tier 4) - Most PvP-oriented warriors go 20 points into the Fury tree for this. PvP is so focused around having a high crit chance, this will be active quite a lot. Completely useless in PvE, but you have to take this to get Flurry, so take it. Improved Slam (Tier 5) - Since the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds, this talent won't actually let you Slam any more often than you already can, but you only have to stand still for half a second. Mostly useless talent in PvE. (Slam itself may still be useful in PvE) Death Wish (Tier 5) - Great talent for an off-tank dps role. Prevent fear and pick up aggro while the main tank flees. Get a huge damage boost when you're not being targeted. Pre-req for Bloodthirst, so take it. Improved Berserker Rage (Tier 6) - Provides another way to gain a burst of rage. Useful when you need to Pummel/Intercept, after a stance-dance, or when just starting a fight. Nice but not essential. Flurry (Tier 6) - The heart & soul of the Fury tree. A high crit rate is essential and will keep this active most of the time. This leads to a massive 30% white DPS increase, essential for PvE dps builds. Bloodthirst (Tier 7) - An instant attack that is much more effective than Whirlwind or Heroic Strike. Scales very well with attack power and does not require a slow weapon. Essential for all fury builds. Precision (Tier 7) - Increases chance to hit by 3%. No-brainer for dual-wield, or any build this deep into fury. Improved Berserker Stance (Tier 8) - Increases your attack power by 10% in Berserker Stance. Great for raid dps, or any warrior planning to be in berserker stance. Rampage (Tier 9) - 41-point talent for Fury increases AP after a crit if you can hit it in time. Mediocre due to high rage cost and unreliable renewals. Protection Last Stand (Tier 3) - Another "panic button" for surviving lag spikes, damage spikes, or just slow healers. At one talent point it is worth taking. Improved Shield Block (Tier 3) - Two blocks every time you use the skill. That is two hits from a boss that cannot be crushing blows. This is extremely valuable for tanking. Improved Revenge (Tier 3) - Essentially worthless outside PvP. Mobs that matter are immune to it. Defiance (Tier 3) - Must-have skill for any serious tank. Mathematically, provides 11.5% more threat than you had before in defensive stance. Improved Sunder Armor (Tier 4) - A controversial talent. Great when you are rage-starved, but many tanks find themselves at full rage during boss fights. If you are burning your rage down properly with heroic strikes, this will still help. Improved Taunt (Tier 4) - Somewhat useful in 5mans, but most warriors agree that if you need to taunt this often, you are probably doing something wrong. Concussion Blow (Tier 5) - Excellent for PVP and required for shield slam. Take it. Improved Shield Bash (Tier 5) - A nice way to pull caster mobs back, since if they are prevented from casting, they'll chase you for a melee attack. Not essential but helpful in certain situations. Often a mage, hunter, or even rogue can do this for you, or you can use your normal shield bash as long as you catch them in the middle of a cast. One-Handed Weapon Specialization (Tier 6) - A 10% bonus is great. You will generate more rage, get more threat from white attacks, etc. This can also give you a little solo viability while dual-wielding. Shield Slam (Tier 7) - A protection warrior's primary threat ability. One of the only threat generators that scales with better gear (along with devastate). Use this to start fights, and use it every time it is cooled down. Focused Rage (Tier 8) - The best new addition to the protection tree. Reduces the rage cost of nearly all your abilities. This will save you a lot of rage, and make it much easier to begin fights with solid aggro. Devastate (Tier 9) - An instant attack designed to be used on bosses after 5 sunders are applied. This is the first scalable threat talent on the global cooldown. This means it will get better as you gear up. Generates more threat/time than sunder, but may be slightly less rage efficient if you have the improved sunder talent. Level 60 Build Examples Be aware that some of these builds date to before Tactical Mastery's move to the Protection Tree and the creation of the Stance Mastery skill. Therefore the Talent Calculator links may not be accurate. They will be adjusted shortly. 31 Arms/20 Fury This is probably the most common build for the solo or PvP-oriented warrior. 31 points in Arms provides many talents centered around burst damage, while 20 points in Fury provides some support skills as well as the all-important Enrage that warriors thrive on in PvP. Talent Calculator Link Key talents here include: *Improved Overpower *Impale *Sweeping Strikes *Two-Handed Weapon Specialization *Mortal Strike *Cruelty *Enrage *Piercing Howl Filler talents that can be removed or added as you like include: *Improved Heroic Strike *Deflection *Improved Charge *Poleaxe Specialization *Mace Specialization *Sword Specialization *Improved Hamstring *Booming Voice *Improved Demoralizing Shout *Improved Cleave Other notes: *The example build has 5/5 Poleaxe Specialization, but you can change this to whatever weapon you prefer or have to use. 31 Arms/5 Fury/15 Protection This is the classic 31/5/15 hybrid build. It is a great build for those seeking the 'best of both worlds'. The Arms and Fury talents give the warrior respectable damage output, while the Protection talents greatly enhance tanking ability. Talent Calculator Link Key talents here include: *Deflection *Tactical Mastery *Improved Overpower *Impale *Sweeping Strikes *Two-Handed Weapon Specialization *Mortal Strike *Cruelty *Defiance Filler talents that can be removed or added as you like include: *Improved Heroic Strike *Improved Hamstring *Shield Specialization *Anticipation *Last Stand *Improved Shield Block Other notes: *The exact points in the Protection tree is the subject of most variations on this build. Last Stand and 1/3 Improved Shield Block can greatly enhance a warrior's ability to stay alive, but you cannot get both those and 5/5 Defiance with only 15 points. To get these talents, you will need 4 extra points--this is done by taking points out of any or all of Cruelty, Toughness, or Defiance. A perfect hybrid with everything is, of course, not possible; you will need to sacrifice either some crit, some armor, some threat generation, or some mitigation. 17 Arms/34 Fury Fury is generally considered to have a greater number of strong talents deep in the tree than Arms. Therefore, Fury warriors generally put more points into Fury than Arms warriors put into Arms. 17 Arms allows for Impale to increase burst damage and overall DPS. Talent Calculator Link Key talents here include: *Tactical Mastery *Improved Overpower *Impale *Cruelty *Unbridled Wrath (if dual wielding only) *Improved Battle Shout *Enrage *Death Wish *Flurry *Bloodthirst Filler talents that can be removed or added as you like include: *Improved Heroic Strike *Deflection *Anger Management *Improved Cleave *Piercing Howl *Blood Craze *Dual Wield Specialization *Improved Execute *Improved Slam *Improved Intercept *Improved Berserker Rage Other notes: *This build can easily work with any kind of weapon, one-handed or two-handed. If you often find yourself playing with different types of weapons, then avoid Unbridled Wrath and Dual Wield Specialization and you will have no talents that require a certain kind of weapon to work well. *A Fury build with Impale allows for only 34 points in Fury at maximum--you will probably need to choose between Dual Wield Specialization for increase damage, or Improved Berserker Rage/Intercept/Execute/Piercing Howl for greater utility abilities. 18 Arms/33 Fury This build is a variant on the 17 Arms/34 Fury. The build is for a dual wield warrior and try to maximize the whole dps. Points are spent only in talents that burst damage, with a particular attention to rage generation. In fact this build doesn't spent a single point in talents like Improved Intercept or Deflection that aren't usefull for dps. Just pay some attention to aggro when spamming Heroic Strike. This build is useful when you try to be the number one on the damage meter list of your raid. Talent Calculator Link Blackmourn's DeVastation Build (0/48/3) This is a newer build created by the PvP Warrior, Blackmourn. It was created to utilize the talents of the fury tree, while wielding a two-handed sword. If you want to be different, but still leathal in PvP, you may enjoy this build. Talent Calculator Link This build also alows some flexibility because it leaves 10 talent points left. x Arms/x Fury/31+ Protection Good for main tanking, particulalry at high-end instance raids. If you look at the talent calculator, not all the points have been spent--this is because there are many, many variations on these heavy Protection main tank builds. The example build is a good place to start, from which you can move some Protection points around and/or fill in some parts of the Arms or Fury trees. Talent Calculator Link Key talents here include: *Deflection *2/5 Tactical Mastery *Shield Specialization *Toughness *Last Stand *1/3 Improved Shield Block *Defiance *Concussion Blow *One-Handed Weapon Specialization *Shield Slam Filler talents that can be removed or added as you like include: *Pretty much everything else Other notes: *Common places to finish up and variations in Protection points for this build include: **14 points into Arms to get Improved Heroic Strike and Anger Management **11 points into Fury to get Piercing Howl **Sacrificing Shield Slam and all Arms talents to go 21 Fury and get Death Wish **Swapping points between Improved Revenge/Sunder Armor/Taunt/Shield Wall/Shield Bash Level 70 Build Examples 41 Arms/20 Fury This includes the new skills that TBC has brought to the Arms Talent. Note that Booming Voice was replaced for Improved Intimidating Shout (underrated skill in my humble opinion). This is a nice PvP build that allows a very nice DPS output in PvE too. Remember to put the 5 points of the weapon specialization in the type of weapon you currently use (I use a nice polearm. That's the reason of the 5 points in the Poleaxe Specialization :P) Talent Calculator Link 5 Arms/41 Fury/15 Protection This is the alternative hybrid build that focuses primarily on Fury tree to provide warrior with strong offensive abilites while at the same time points invested in Protection tree allow better damage mitigation and increased threat in tanking role. This build also generates threat better than Arms/Protection build because of increased damage due to Flurry and Enrage proc effects. Rage generation is also one more strong side of this build because Warrior has acess to both Unbridled Wrath and Shield Specialization. Talent Calculator link Key talents in this buil include: Arms talents: *Deflection Fury talents: *Cruelty *Unbridled Wrath *Improved Cleave - alternative to Sweeping Strikes *Piercing Howl - great ability for PVP or PVE *Improved Battle Shout - only 1 point in this. Basicly a filler to get deeper in Fury tree. *Dual Wield Specialization - build focuses on using two 1-handed weapons so this is a natural choice *Enrage - very usefull for threat generation while tanking and it is prerequisite for Flurry *Death Wish - nice for increased damage and getting out of fear regardless of stance *Flurry - bread and butter of dual-wield Fury build. Good for damage and increased threat while tanking *Precision - more +hit modifier, more damage, simple as that *Bloodthirst *Improved Berserker Stance *Rampage Protection talents: *Tactical Mastery - extremly usefull for everything except pure damage role in raid *Anticipation - not really usefull because it doesn't scale well with gear, but better option than Improved Bloodrage *Shield Specialization - increases damage mitigation and threat generation (Block can be followed by Revenge and additional rage can be used for all abilites) *Last Stand - great for getting out of tough situations *Improved Shield Block - natural extension to Shield Specialization *Defiance - huge boost in threat generation Raelor's Build This build, created by Raelor of Duskwood, is designed for a slow, 2-hand axe or polearm Arms build, yet incorporating items from Fury and Protection that any warrior would find useful. This would be more useful in PVE or Raiding to maximize damage output, but not as much in PVP because it skips Iron Will which would be useful against rogues. Arms Talents: *Improved Heroic Strike - 3 points *Deflection - 5 points (required if you ever find the need to off-tank) *Improved Charge - 2 points *Anger Management *Deep Wounds - 3 points *Two-Handed Weapon Specialization - 5 points *Impale - 5 points *Poleaxe Specialization* - 5 points *Sweeping Strikes *Weapon Mastery - 2 points (you could skip on this if you don't PVP much, but I still find it useful for PVE) *Blood Frenzy - 2 points *Mortal Strike *Second Wind - 2 points (again, you could skip on this if you don't PVP much, but I find it useful for PVE too) *Improved Mortal Strike - 5 points *Endless Rage Fury Talents: *Unbridled Wrath - 5 points (This talent, as of patch 2.0.10, has been changed to benefit 2-handed MS-spec warriors as well as fury and protection warriors. It is now an extremely good choice for this build.) *Cruelty - 5 points *Improved Cleave - 3 points (I find that once my sweeping strikes is up, I like to cleave a lot, so this would be useful for maximizing my damage output if you have the rage to spend) *Piercing Howl (Very useful for PVP, also useful for PVE, a good alternative to Hamstring) *Improved Battle Shout - 1 point (I only put 1 point into here so that my battle shout is more powerful than the tanks of the group, and that I may refresh it at will and not worry about getting the "There is a more powerful spell activated" error message. Feel free to put 5 points into here if you have skipped out on Weapon Mastery and Second Wind from above.) *Improved Execute** - 2 points (It should be self-explanatory why I chose this ability. I get a heck of a lot of use out of execute and this not only lets me execute sooner, if I need to quickly finish a runner, but also gives me more damage if I execute with more than the required rage. ) Protection Talents: (only one) *Tactical Mastery - 2 points (Every warrior should have this and due to my build, I could only spare 2 points for this talent. It is extremely useful for just about everything and in order to be an effective warrior, you should learn how to effectively "stance dance".) Conclusion: This build lets me effectively maximize my burst damage, and with a 30% crit chance (or more) in parties, I consistently top the damage charts, even outdoing rogues, mages, and warlocks. Feel free to email me for comments on this build and your experience with it. My WowWiki username is DoubleA, and you can find my email on my profile page. Tips: * Personally, I like poleaxe specialization because I have a huge crit chance which helps a lot with soloing. But I have also heard great things about sword specialization. Imagine popping MS for a crit, then having that proc an extra attack and having that crit too. Or imagine even using whirlwind against 5 targets and having each of those also proc an extra attack. Now, I admit, these situations are rare, but if you desire, take your chance with sword specialization if you wish. Mace specialization I will say does not appeal at all to me, because eventually the targets you will want to stun will end up being immune. But it is definitely more for PVP and if you have The Unstoppable Force and love stunning those pesky flag runners. However, this is not meant to be a PVP build. In the end, it's all up to you, of course, so choose wisely ;) ** Improved Execute means that your execute ability now costs only 10 rage. Therefore, if you ever fail to finish off a runner, you also have the option of popping Bloodrage and executing them again with the instant 10 rage bonus. 12 Arms/5 Fury/44 Protection A build based completely on the protection tree. This build primary fuction is to tank. Talent Calculator Link Key talents in this build are: *Improved Bloodrage *Shield Specialization *Last Stand *Improved Shield Block (Blizzard fixed this talent) *Improved Shield Bash *Defiance *Improved Shield Wall *Concussion Blow *One-Handed Weapon Specialization *Shield Slam *Shield Mastery *Focused Rage *Vitality *Devastate *Deflection *Iron Will Fillers: *Improved Charge *Cruelty *1/2 Improved Taunt *Improved Sunder Armor Category:Guides Category:Warriors Category:Talents Category:Warrior Talents External Links Fortifications A Warrior Reference Guide Shows various builds focused more on the Protection tree.